


Queen

by pastel (cloudboy)



Category: unOrdinary (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst, Blyke-centric (unOrdinary), Brief Profanity, Gen, Mention of Gore, UA [universe alteration], crosspost, pre-117
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-20
Updated: 2019-09-20
Packaged: 2020-10-24 22:18:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20713430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloudboy/pseuds/pastel
Summary: Remi doesn't make it out of the fight with Volcan, and Blyke and Isen are left to deal with the aftermath.





	Queen

**Author's Note:**

> Mood music: [The Real Hero](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMe8e5GcY0c).

The day of Remi’s funeral is one of the most beautiful of the year.

The chapel is bathed in golden sunlight from the west-facing windows. Blyke detachedly marvels at the irony; in movies, funerals are always dark and rainy and gloomy, and he thinks that’s how they should be. After all, the sun has no business smiling when someone has died, someone special. Especially not someone like Remi.

There isn’t a cloud in sight. The sun continues to laugh at him.

Beside him, his father shifts as Remi’s mother continues to tearfully stumble through her eulogy. He must be getting hot; Blyke knows he is. That has a tendency to happen, though, when you’re sitting in the sunlight and wearing black because you’re attending a funeral. He feels suddenly guilty, like being uncomfortable at your best friend’s wake is a sin. Maybe Remi wouldn’t mind. Maybe Remi wouldn’t care.

If she were still around, maybe.

Blyke realizes with a dull pang that that’s the first thing he’s actually _felt_ in a little over twelve hours – guilt. It’s the first thing he’s felt since the reality of Remi’s death crashed down on him early that morning, as he lay sleeplessly in the dark. He had screamed when it hit him, and he hadn’t stopped until his voice had nearly given out and his parents had run in panicked. And then he had collapsed into deep, racking sobs as they held him close and assured him that it would be all right.

That’s the last thing, the last feeling, he remembers. The aching, hollow numbness from the preceding days has returned since then, and Blyke’s throat reminds him that it’s probably better this way.

He wonders how Isen is handling things – not because he really cares, but because his pride is wounded from allowing himself to be seen in such a sorry state. It would help him feel better to know that Isen doesn’t have the dignity to push through this unfazed, either.

This is Isen’s fault, Blyke thinks suddenly. The lingering guilt is eclipsed by bitter, boiling resentment toward his remaining friend. It reminds him of how he felt the minute he realized that Remi was dead, but Isen wasn’t. If Isen weren’t such a coward, maybe she would still be here. If he had just used his damned ability to its full potential, maybe she wouldn’t be gone. It’s all his fault.

Blyke clenches his fist against the searing wave of rage and pain. His mother places a hand over it and begins rubbing soothing circles with her thumb.

He realizes that he hasn’t seen Isen among the attendees. He thinks that if it were his fault one of his best friends was dead, the least he could do was show up to their funeral. But maybe if he were a coward like Isen, he wouldn’t have the courage to save face, either.

♛

Remi looks peaceful, almost as if she’s asleep. She was beautiful in her time. It’s only then Blyke realizes, staring detachedly down at her soul’s empty shell, that perhaps he’d had something of a crush on her. He would gladly have spent the rest of his days with her by his side.

The sun catches strands of her hair, making them look like spun threads of rosy gold. Blyke swallows the sudden lump in his throat and looks away as heavy reality threatens to drag him down into that dark pit of tears and pain once more. He tries to make himself feel better by telling himself that there was nothing he could have done, that it’s Isen’s fault she’s gone, but the hole in his heart remains.

She was too young. They were all too young.

It should have been Isen. It was Isen’s job to protect her. That was why Blyke had sent him down there to begin with, to protect her.

The anger rises again.

♛

Blyke tunes out the sobs of Remi’s parents for his own sanity, but it’s Arlo that makes this particularly hard. He puts so much time, so much energy, into trying to be strong that it’s easy to forget he’s just as human as anyone else if he’s stripped of his power. For all the time Blyke’s spent around him, even he forgets. He thinks that maybe Arlo forgets sometimes, too – forgets himself.

Arlo is silent as he regards his Queen. He’s working his jaw, and it’s obvious that he’s trying to remain expressionless. But his brows are knitted, and for all his efforts, he looks like he’s trying to hold back tears. Blyke has never seen Arlo in this state, and he’s not sure how to respond. Arlo gets angry, not sad. This isn’t right.

A single drop overflows from his left eye, and it’s only when he bows his head that Blyke realizes just how much Arlo actually cared for Remi. Seeing this side of Arlo, this weaker, gentler side, is almost more jarring than viewing Remi’s corpse. He takes in a wet, quivering breath through his nose, and Blyke looks away, eyes focusing blankly on the lid of the casket. He can practically _feel_ Arlo’s overwhelming grief, enveloping him in a suffocating embrace that he had been hoping to evade. The searing wrath and gelid numbness clutching his broken heart in their icy-hot grasp are welcome over such deeply-rooted anguish, and Blyke is willing to make them his lifelong companions so long as they never allow him to feel such heartache again.

But his vision blurs, and a hot tear glides down his face.

♛

It turns out that Isen has decided to attend after all. Blyke doesn’t notice until he can’t bear to look at Remi any longer and lifts his gaze to the windows in a valiant effort to compose himself. He stills when he sees that Isen has at some point come to stand at the foot of the casket; the rage flares so hotly and suddenly that Blyke fears for a moment that he might succumb to raw instinct and attack him then and there – and then suddenly it’s gone. Insensate ice fills the space where the fire once was, and he’s gone back to being completely, achingly numb. He regards Isen blandly, vaguely realizing that they haven’t seen each other, or spoken, at all since that fateful night.

Isen’s expression is vacant as he stares down at Remi, almost as if he’s still in shock. His eyes are blank, his jaw slightly slack, and if it weren’t for the plum-hued smudges under his eyes and the faded clusters of petechial hemorrhages dotting his face, Blyke would wonder if anyone had been home in the past few days. His suit, which Blyke definitely remembers fit him like a model at the last school dance, is hanging off of his frame now – not quite enough to appear indecorous, but still discernably. Blyke sees then, with an abrupt, swelling ache in his chest, that Isen is as broken by this as he is. He finds himself confused – Isen and Remi were never exceptionally close, and Blyke privately considers himself the glue that held their trio together.

The mere mention of Remi’s name in his thoughts generates another immense lump in his windpipe, which he painfully swallows as his eyes burn with the threat of more tears. Damn, he misses her. The blissfully numb ice is beginning to thaw, unfortunately for him, and this time, there’s no infernal fury to cover what’s underneath.

Blyke is only acutely aware that he’s been staring at Isen for a solid minute until his eyes flick up and their gazes meet. He grasps desperately for anger, but comes up empty-handed and instead finds himself torturously lost in Isen’s hollow eyes. They’ve never been particularly bright, but they have a distinctive texture that now seems lusterless and flat. Somewhere far within, he can see a raging gale of emotions whose individual components he has no interest in identifying. He tears free and rests his stare on Remi’s folded hands after pausing to note the puffiness under his left coat sleeve. Distantly, he thinks that without Isen directly present behind those empty windows, their color cannot be bittersweet – only bitter.

Isen remains in this withdrawn, ostensibly emotionless state for the while after the viewing of Remi’s body, his face unexpectedly more successfully neutral than even Arlo’s as she’s carried to her final resting place in the adjacent cemetery. It’s only when their beloved friend is lowered into her grave that his presence returns. As the first shovelfuls of soil land on the glossy coffin, Blyke somehow hears Isen’s jaw snap shut with an audible click through the heavy, deep-set sorrow that has since resumed its dutiful task of weighing him down. He looks over and sees that Isen’s sable brows are furrowed and his fist is clenched at his side, the once-distant maelstrom of feelings now just below the surface of his gleaming eyes. Blyke has only seen Isen cry once before, the night Remi died, and he already knows that after Arlo, he can’t handle this, too.

He squeezes his eyes shut, listening to the gravelly sound of the shovels sliding into the dirt and the soft _thumps_ of the soil landing in the grave, and wills himself to be strong.

♛

Blyke watches Isen from the bench under the towering oak tree a little way away, a resigned sense settling on him as he observes his friend stare at the fresh, dark earth on the grave. Remi’s parents are to his left, her mother mourning loudly from where she’s collapsed on her knees next to her husband. After a few moments, Isen turns and mumbles what Blyke presumes is an apology to the couple, the father wordlessly clasping his shoulder in melancholy gratitude. Isen meanders away afterward, swiping at his eyes, until his gaze lands on Blyke and he strides over. Blyke’s eyes follow him, but he remains silent and only sits up from where he’s rested his elbows on his knees when Isen cautiously seats himself on the opposite end of the bench.

An awkward silence descends. Blyke has no idea what to say; he’s not sure there is anything to say. Rage and wracking guilt are the only things he’s felt when he’s thought of Isen recently; he hasn’t been able to extricate his feelings on him from those of Remi’s death since the incident. Are they even friends anymore, he wonders? It’s entirely possible that Isen blames him for what happened, just as he’d blamed Isen. A cool breeze sends brilliant red leaves raining from above and lifts Blyke’s bangs from his forehead, evaporating the beads of nervous sweat that have begun to accumulate underneath. Isen sighs heavily a short moment after the leaves stop falling, and then he finally speaks: “I’m sorry.”

Blyke looks over at him, surprised although he knows he shouldn’t be. He opens his mouth to reply and finds himself bereaved of words. Isen shouldn’t be sorry; he’d tried to tell them that becoming a Superhero team would end badly. _He’s _the one who should be sorry, Blyke realizes; he should have tried harder to stop Remi. He should have listened to Isen. They both should have. “For what?” he croaks instead.

Isen doesn’t visibly react to the condition of his voice, and Blyke is grateful. He looks off, unseeing, into the distance, deliberately avoiding his gaze. Blyke watches him think, reacquainting himself with Isen’s features and marveling at how one can forget what his own friend looks like over the course of a week. He remembers Remi commenting on how infuriatingly flawless Isen’s side profile is once, and telling him at the dance that he surprisingly cleans up quite nicely. Her giggles echo distantly in his head, and Blyke feels an unexpected stab of envy. When all is said and done, Isen may very well end up more powerful than him, and despite that, he has the privilege of breezing through high school without a care in the world – while Blyke shoulders the responsibility of maintaining order at a notoriously disorderly school _and_ the debilitating anxiety that accompanies it.

“For not going down there in time to save...her,” Isen replies, derailing Blyke’s train of thought. He looks back over from where his gaze has wandered to the group of people still near Remi’s grave and sees that Isen is finally looking at him. The wind tousles his lightly-gelled hair gently, golden beams catching stray, dyed strands and transforming them into coppery threads. His eyes aren’t glazed and empty like earlier, but now they are full of regret, and Blyke isn’t sure what’s worse. He looks past his head instead into the late-afternoon sun. “I know I was – am – a coward,” Isen continues, “and – ”

“No,” Blyke cuts him off. He can’t handle seeing Isen like this. This isn’t the Isen he knows, and even if it’s the real Isen, it’s not the Isen he _wants_ to know. He wants the Isen that makes dark jokes and could make Remi laugh from beyond the grave, the Isen that hates responsibility, the Isen that’s immature and eccentric, carefree and aloof. Not this depressed, subdued version that has felt things most humans in their lifetimes could never feel, and will probably, Blyke understands with a brief but knifing pang of heartbreak, never be quite the same. He knows he himself won’t. “It’s not your fault,” Blyke rasps after a pause. “I shouldn’t...I shouldn’t have pulled rank on you up there. You’d...you’d just felt something most people never will, and I shouldn’t have expected you to...just, snap out of it. So...” Blyke takes a deep breath, and then releases it. “_I’m_ sorry.”

Isen lifts his chin slightly and looks away. For a fleeting second, his expression is smug – at least, that’s how it looks to Blyke – and it strikes a spited chord. But before his since-cooled temper can begin to smolder, the moment passes, and Isen’s face takes on a contrite shade of neutral. He shakes his head and looks back at Blyke. “I think we’re both partially to blame,” he says, eyes searching for something in Blyke’s that he cannot pinpoint. “So we’re cool?”

His face is perfectly straight; there’s not an inkling of a smile in his voice or even his eyes, like there always is when he asks that question, and his utter lack of joviality renders Blyke speechless for the second time since he’s sat down. He swallows hard. “Yeah. Yeah, we’re cool."

♛

Blyke casts one more glance back at Remi’s grave, letting his eyes linger on the black soil. He vaguely recognizes that it’s more for closure than anything; it’s not as if he’ll never visit her again. Wiping at his eyes, he sighs heavily and follows Isen down the path and into the descending darkness.

Outside the gate, Isen stops, slipping his hands into his pockets, and turns to bid Blyke farewell; Headmaster Vaughn has granted them and Arlo a month off, and they’ll be going home with their families to heal. They won’t be seeing each other again for a while. Isen opens his mouth, but the words seem to catch in his throat, and no sound comes out. Blyke doesn’t judge.

He glances down at the slight bulge on Isen’s forearm, and realizes that it would only be considerate to inquire about the condition of the injury he’d unintentionally dealt him in grief-stricken rage. “How’s, uh...how’s your arm doing?” he asks, jerking his chin at it in a half-gesture, and stuffs his hands into his pockets.

“Oh, this?” Isen replies, lifting it and letting his eyes dance along the elongated lump under his sleeve. “It’s fine. Your beam shaved off everything down to the bone, and then some. The healer did a pretty good job – still needs to be bandaged, though. It’ll be better by the time we get back, though, so it’s fine.”

Blyke notes that he repeats “it’s fine” and describes the severity of a wound that he’s already seen. He remembers dark blood and bits of flesh contrasting starkly with clean, white bone, and not caring because he thought it was Isen’s own fault, that Isen deserved it. He doesn’t doubt that his arm will be all right, but he hopes that Isen’s willing to forgive him and that “it” really is “fine.”

“Shoulda seen the street, though,” Isen says, and tucks his hand back into his pocket. He’s starting to sound more like himself, and Blyke studies his face, hoping to glimpse some physical evidence of mirth. But his mouth doesn’t curve upward even slightly, and his face remains expressionless as before. His heart sinks. “Good to hear, man,” he says, and his voice nearly gives out despite him barely having used it since that morning.

“Yeah.”

A mildly strained hush settles over them, and Blyke realizes with an acute twinge of bittersweet that he’ll miss Isen more than he ever has. But he’s learned over the course of their friendship that Isen prefers solitude in situations such as this, and though he wishes that weren’t the case, he knows that it will ultimately do them both good. Isen looks out into the parking lot, where his parents have paid their respects to Remi’s and are patiently waiting in the car for their son. “Well, I’ve got a plane to catch later tonight, so...I guess I’d better go,” he says, looking back at Blyke.

Blyke nods. A sudden question springs to mind, one that has plagued him since he’s become Jack but has hardly left his mind over the past week, and he knows then that it’s not something he wants to discuss over text, or even talking on the phone. “Just...quick question, before you go,” he rasps.

“Yeah?”

“How...are you ever – ” Blyke stops, trying to condense the whirlpool of words and emotions in his brain into a coherent sentence. “Do you ever...y’know, get insecure about your ability, or anything like that?”

It’s a completely random question. Isen gives him a strange look for a brief moment, then understanding dawns in his eyes, and Blyke is staggeringly relieved that he _gets _it – he can perceive the vulnerability, how heavily it’s weighed on him, why he can’t carry it with him anymore...he _gets _it. He suddenly feels like collapsing into tears and shifts his weight. Isen studies him with an unreadable expression, then nods. “Yeah, sometimes.”

Blyke snorts. “You shouldn’t – you have a really versatile kit.”

“And who’s the Jack here again?”

“What about if you pass me up?”

This time Isen snorts. “Like it’s even a competition. I already know I’d be an awful Jack, ‘cause I hate responsibility and love my freedom. I’m a free spirit, you know? So unless Arlo forces me to be Jack, you don’t have to worry about getting knocked down.”

Blyke shifts his gaze away from Isen’s. “It’s...not even really that. My ability is just so bland, you know? And the way I fight, too – just, so obvious.” He shrugs one shoulder. “I don’t know.”

Isen looks out into the graveyard, and one corner of his mouth twitches upward in an aborted attempt at a nostalgic smile. “You skinned my arm down to the fuckin’ _bone_, Blyke - the fucking _bone_. And that beam just grazed me. You can legitimately ki – ” He stops himself, thinking better of whatever he was about to say, and shakes his head. “My point is, you’re pretty powerful, and you’re Jack for a reason. And if getting more powerful means that I’ll be forced into some stupid leadership position, I’m happy where I am.” He looks back at Blyke, and he could swear that there’s a gleam in his eyes. “And I know if Remi were here, she’d agree with me,” he adds softly.

Blyke drops his gaze to his polished black shoes and nods, pressing his lips together and diverting his attention to regaining his composure. Isen’s right. Blyke knows he’s right. “Yeah,” he croaks, lifting his head and nodding tightly. “Yeah.”

Isen’s mouth curves upward, just barely, and his eyes sparkle with what Blyke can now see are unshed tears. Blyke has the sudden impulse to hug him, and for a rare change, he gives in. Isen doesn’t pull away and squeezes back with the same fervor as for a brief moment they truly share each other’s grief. Blyke’s heart wrenches in his chest.

“See you next month, bud,” Isen says over his shoulder, his voice slightly thick, and gives Blyke a few hearty claps on the back before pulling away. Blyke can almost see him retreating into himself again, and he very deliberately ignores the painful tugging in his soul and nods. “See you next month,” he echoes, and they go their separate ways. ♥


End file.
